


Fog

by ShadeDuelist



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Hospitalization, Medication, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Sexual Frustration, psychiatry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 21:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3356087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadeDuelist/pseuds/ShadeDuelist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When her husband has to be admitted into a psychiatry ward, the last thing this woman thought she'd miss was their lovemaking.  And yet, all it takes is a few less-than-light kisses and she's lost to frustration that stems from far more than just a few days' deprivation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fog

It wasn’t fair, she mused, punching the pillow, shedding silent tears in the night.  Not fair, to be alone.  Not fair, to be cold in the kingsized bed.  Not fair, to still smell the faintest traces of his cologne on the sides of her pillow.  Every punch into the bedding sent more of it into the air, more molecules of ‘Desert Nights’ for her to inhale.  It wasn’t fair that he was there and she was here.

Not fair, _so_ not fair.

He’d gone and had a final collapse, right there in the hallway in front of their bedroom.  His mind, so precariously balanced for months and months on the razor-thin edge between utter madness and analytical calmth, had plummeted into depths where she could not follow, reached places where she had no home or shelter.  He’d been vile to her (as always he was whenever The Dark Thoughts took over) and something inside of her had broken.  She hadn’t stayed with him, even though her heart ached as she bicycled to work halfway across the city.  She hadn’t stayed because she didn’t know what to do, because she hadn’t wanted to make it worse.  The doctor had come for him and had written it off as a bad reaction to the drinks he’d had the night before, but she knew it was more.  She _knew_ that this was more than a hangover turned sour.

And she’d been proven right.

As he’d walked away in the middle of the following night, the nurse of the hospital’s emergencies ward gently guiding him to what would become his new home for the next weeks, what little inside of her that hadn’t broken was twisted and wrenched into an awkward fetal position deep inside her soul.  A crying, shambling mess of a being was all that remained of her, barely performing its daily duties of living, breathing, circulating blood, let alone formulate thoughts.  Thoughts, after all, were always his forte.  She was more impulsive, more energy, more nervosity than him; he was the man with the plan, the prepared one, those infernal Dark Thoughts be _damned_.  But as she fell asleep that first night, on their sofa because she couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping alone in that overlarge bed, she mused that maybe the plan had been a facade, hiding the slow but sure descent into madness that he had to have felt… and she cried bitter tears.

Waking up was an ordeal that first morning without him.  Showering was a necessity that she nevertheless almost skipped.  Breakfast?  Her stomach tied itself in knots just thinking about food.  All that was on her mind was him, him, him.  His voice, his presence, his warmth, the little kiss good morning he gave her before she had to go off to work… all of them were gone now.  Gone for how long?  Nobody knew.  Answers came in tiny little waves.  He’d have to stay twenty-four days.  His doctor didn’t yet know the problem.  The one word, ‘eccentricity’, scritched onto a writing pad next to his name and room number - she read it upside down from one of the nurses’ clipboards.  Answers came wrapped in ten more questions, and she didn’t like it.  But there was nothing she could do about that.  She knew full well that _he_ was the one in charge at the moment: if he refused to see her, she wouldn’t see him, and if he refused to have her informed about his condition, she wouldn’t know anything that she couldn’t tell by sight.

What was even worse than the answers that were sparse and the uncertainty whether he’d even want to see her, however, was the need she felt.  It was _shameful_ to her, the way one night’s absence, or two, or even three, awakened a ravenous hunger for his company and his affection both emotional and physical.  His touches, his kisses, the way his hips rolled into her just right as they made love in the hours between dusk and dawn… she dreamt of those, of hours wasted heating up their bodies until they ignited and flared like bonfires together, waking up with an ache that far surpassed any discomfort the couch gave her - which, considering the fact that she woke up with back cramps so severe that she had to take a hot bath each morning just to be able to relax enough for work, was a feat in its own right - and making her long for him all the more fiercely.

After a week of worrying and gathering as much fragments of answers as humanly possible, she could finally visit him, finding him sitting there, staring in front of him without seeing half of the time, repeating how sorry he was, how foggy his head seemed with the medication, and how he hated being a burden.  Other people came and went, and she alone kept repeating that important message: he had nothing to apologise for, he wasn’t a burden, all he was was afraid and in desperate need of guidance…  He never reacted to her words until one moment.  They were sitting in his new room - or, rather, _she_ was sitting and _he_ was laying in the bed, because he’d felt tired and the fog in his head blanketed his senses, lulling him to a medicine-fuelled sleep - when she suddenly felt his arm snake around her shoulders and pull her closer to him, and she turned just in time to feel their lips meet and his instantly part to very gently allow his tongue to flick out over her bottom lip.  Instantly, the hunger was there, as was the ache, and she instantly parted her own lips to return the favor, somehow managing to keep the kiss light instead of hungrily-demanding.  And he kissed her like that again and again, making her _burn_ with need as easily as flicking a light switch.  She groaned happily as his thumb came to rest on the back of her head, keeping her in place, but his kisses never wandered, his lips never strayed, and after a while their kisses dwindled down to mere feather-light ghosts of what they’d been before until they ceased altogether and he sighed out softly, closing his eyes again.  The fog in his head, he said, the fog made everything look so dull… and she bit her lip softly, licking the last flavor of him off there before answering that it’d be okay, that he should take his time to recover.  That she wouldn’t leave his side.

That night, she skipped the couch, instead picking up her pajamas and heading up to their bedroom.  The bed looked just as she’d left it that fateful morning: his pajamas lay on her side of the bed, as did his stuffed animal and hers, buried between the bedding like the plains of cotton and wool were off limits to anyone but them.  It had certainly felt like that to her before, and as she settled in between the cool sheets, it certainly felt like that again.  Unfair, that she’d ached with desire but had to sleep there alone.  Unfair, that the fog and the darkness and the pain should keep them apart.

Unfair that her body was selfish when her heart wanted him to be free at last.

The scent of him hung heavy around her, almost suffocatingly so - the smell of his cologne from her pillow, the scent of his sweat rising from his pajamas, the faintest trace of his odor still lingering in her nostrils of their short heated exchange of before - the latter one was imagination, she knew, but it was fuelled by need on both a primal level and an elevated one, and it burnt in her heart.  Longing for completion flared up inside of her like wildfire, consuming what she was, strengthening and weakening her at the same time.  Her body ached for his, and her heart and mind ached for seeing him whole, seeing him restored to the glorious man he’d been when they’d met and fallen for one another.  Years of grief fell off like the layers of an onion as her fingers slowly made their way beneath clothing to still the hunger.  The air in the room felt stagnant more than ever as she gasped and felt his lips on hers again, and empty what-ifs and if-onlys filling her mind.  Imagination and deprivation took over in a single beat of her heart, and suddenly she was back there with him, and he was free of the fog, and every slightest touch halted their breathing and their heartbeat for a split second.  She knew exactly what he’d do, exactly how he’d peel off her clothes, exactly how and where his fingertips would dig into her muscles.  She moaned lowly in the dark of the night, watching the crescent moon through a foggy window before she had to shut her eyes again, desire blanketing _her_ senses as the haze of medication had blurred his.  The closer to unwinding she got, the more her mental images grew detailed - the gentle brush of his fingertips, the flick of his tongue against her flesh, the sound of his groans - _oh,_ the sound of his _breathing!_ \- and suddenly, she whimpered his name in a half-sob and tears ran down her cheeks as her body grew hot like a lightbulb filament and then slowly eased back down, tension seeping from her body to be replaced with weary complacency.  Her mind, however, was swirling tempestuously, restless and guilty.  She shouldn’t feel any kind of need, she shouldn’t feel any kind of hunger like that, let alone give in to it.  Turning to the side, she pulled the covers all the way up, leaving only a small opening to breathe through.

If anyone ever asked, she told herself as sleep claimed her like the tide claims the shore, she’d cried herself to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Before you ask: a) this work is fiction, b) my husband is doing okay now, and c) I hate what is happening right now in my life, I really really do, but I'm okay as well.


End file.
